Monday, June 23, 2008

Learning to juggle

From Dr. Joyce Brothers' column:

DEAR DR. BROTHERS: I'm 16 years old, and I play three sports and am an editor on the school paper in addition to volunteering at the local hospital and our homeless shelter. I've been dreaming of going to a top Ivy League school my whole life, and I'm doing everything I can to get in. I'm terrified that I won't get in, and I'm totally stressed out. On top of all this, my parents are getting a divorce. It's really hard to be at home, and I don't know what to do. How can I keep my schoolwork up, keep doing all my extracurricular stuff and keep my home life together? -- D.H.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

D.H.,
About getting into an ivy league school, don't stress. Believe me. I was a straight A student in high school, but I did absolutely NO extracurricular activities (except a few hours of voluteer tutoring) and I was still accepted into Cornell U. So I think you'll do just fine with that. My parents are going through a divirce right now too, only I don't really have to deal with being home because I'm usually hundreds of miles away in college. But now I'm home for the summer, and I know how you feel. I'm ok with my mom, but it's just not the same with my dad. Anyway, my advice is to focus on your schoolwork, if you have to let some extracurricular activities go, so be it. And about keeping your home life together, unfortunately, that's not up to us "kids"; that's for the parents to fix or break and we're basically just going to have to be here for the ride.

Anonymous said...

I really like your blog. Thanks for keeping it up!

november said...

Wow, his situation sounds so similar to mine when I was in high school, with the exception of the Ivy League aspiration; I just wanted to attend a high quality college.

My homelife was miserable during my high school years and with each passing year, my parents' relationship seemed to get worse exponentially. I don't know how I kept it together and managed to pull off getting very good grades and being involved in extra-curriculars (and leading two of them) given the madness that was my home. I'm sure I suffered from clinical depression as I cried every night and seriously contemplated suicide.

Actually, I do know how I made it through and reached my goals; it was COMPLETELY through God's grace, which I didn't know about then as a non-Christian.

It was far from easy though.

I'll say a prayer for him.